Free Fade Into You by Kate Dawes

would be all business. And that’s why the professional attire worked.
    “Ready for work?” he said, going for light-hearted.
    I forced a smile. “We need to talk.”
    I moved aside and he stepped across the threshold. “Those are never good words.”
    As he moved past me, Max brought his hand around from behind his back and produced a bottle of wine. Great. He’d come here thinking that we’d have a few glasses of wine, loosen up, and have a roll in the sack.
    “Your favorite,” he said.
    I looked at it for a second but made no move to take it.
    “What’s wrong, Olivia?”
    I looked down at the floor. “Let’s sit down.”
    He followed me into the den. I sat in a chair as Max took a seat on the couch. He put the bottle of wine on top of a magazine on the coffee table. “Not even going to sit beside me?”
    “Max…I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
    “If it’s a bad time—”
    “No.” I sighed, dropping my head into my hands. Breathe, Olivia. Gather your strength and get this over with. “I can’t do this. Us. What we’re doing. I’m sorry.” My words were coming out in nearly incoherent sputtering.
    “Is this about the other night?”
    I nodded. “But not the sex. It was the brush-off.”
    “I wasn’t brushing you off.”
    “Max, please. Let me finish.”
    “Sorry. Go on.”
    I took a slow, deep breath. “I shouldn’t have let things go as far as they did. It was my fault. I should have trusted my instincts.” I looked down at my hand as though examining my fingernails, then looked back up at him. “There’s something you don’t know about me. I have some…baggage, to put it mildly. Things that happened before I moved here. I’m not ready for a relationship, or dating, or any of this.”
    Max leaned back on the sofa and put his arms behind his head. “Tell me.”
    “I just told you.”
    “Tell me what happened,” he pleaded.
    “I don’t want to go into it. The details aren’t important.”
    He sat forward quickly, then got on the floor on one knee. It was too close to looking like a proposal.
    “Don’t,” I said, sliding back on the chair.
    He put his hand on my knee. “We all have baggage, Olivia. You think I took you home the other night for no reason?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Baggage. I have it, too.”
    I looked at him through the tears that were welling up in my eyes. “Tell me.”
    He gave me a half-smile. “I asked first.”
    I laughed.
    “I’ll tell you,” he said. “And I’ll go first. I’ll share with you if you share with me.”
    “Okay.”
    He sat on the floor, extended his long legs out, and leaned back on his hands. “I’m not going to lie; I’ve had my share of flings. All Hollywood cliché bullshit. All of it. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a single person in this town who’s real. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that everyone here is playing some part in their own little film of their life. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a meaningful conversation with a woman?”
    I shook my head.
    “Me either,” he said. “I gave up trying to remember the last time. The worst part is, everyone’s after something. A part in a movie. Money. Being seen on a red carpet. It doesn’t matter what it is, if I have it, someone wants it, and there’s no shortage of women who’ll do anything to get it. I’ve played the game long enough. It’s not interesting anymore. There’s no challenge, no mystery, no romance.”
    “Wow.”
    He was speaking with such conviction, he almost looked pissed off about it.
    “I’m not even doing what I love anymore,” he said.
    “Making movies? But you’re at the top now.”
    He threw his head back, and I felt kind of silly, like I’d missed something. And I had.
    “That’s a whole different issue for another time. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
    “But I want to know,” I said, getting on the floor next to him. God, I wanted to know. What was in the mind and heart of this man?
    He